Model Spy

You Could Call Her The Countess Of Counter-espionage, Based On Her World War Ii Record.

July 15, 1987|By Michael Kilian.

WRITING FROM NEW YORK — If nothing else, this has been a great year for countesses.

As always, we`ve had the beauteous Countess Barat, whom a magazine writer recently described as ``shadowy,`` but without whom life would be truly unbearable--certainly life in New York, except for when she`s kicking me in the shins for my steamy heavy breathing over the runway models at the haute couture fashion shows she takes me to.

And there`s been the captivating Countess Bobrinskoy, cousin to the late czar and chairnoblewoman of the annual Russian Nobility Ball and Waldorf Vodka Swill, celebrated--as she put it--``in the distinctive Russian manner.`` If she had been czarina, Lenin would have ended up a borscht salesman, or maybe simply as borscht.

But now I`ve encountered perhaps the ultimate countess--Aline, Countess of Romanones. A maid of 64 summers who looks perhaps half that, best friend of the late Duchess of Windsor, wife of a genuine Spanish grandee, resident of one of the grander addresses along Park Avenue, she`s the only regular at Mortimer`s exclusive ultrachic Upper East Side cafe who has actually killed someone--at least that I know about.

Claus von Bulow, nee Cecil Boberg, also is a regular at Mortimer`s, but he doesn`t count. He was acquitted in his second courtroom at-bat and his wife remains in a coma.

There are some who may harbor some murderous notions concerning exclusive Mortimer`s maitre d` when he declines to honor them with a table, but they don`t count either. If they did, they`d be given a table.

In the line of duty

Anyway, the Countess of Romanones, who is always given a table, dispatched this chap in the line of duty. It was during World War II, he was one of The Enemy, her life was in jeopardy and--as she`s been telling book tour audiences (are there any other kind anymore?) this summer--she was a spy! If you want to know how the fellow got done in, you`ll have to read her just-published book, ``The Spy Wore Red.`` I gave my copy to a beautiful fashion model friend before I could get into the really exciting parts.

Beautiful fashion models are big on the countess because she used to be one herself. A native of suburban New York, she did haute couture for Hattie Carnegie in New York before joining the Office of Strategic Services as an agent in 1943. And, with Park Avenue digs, a castle in Spain and, best of all, having kept her haute couture figure all these decades, she`s certainly an inspiration to the profession.

In any event, unlike the present espionage era of feckless White House paper-shreddings and antic flights to Iran with birthday cakes, the countess didn`t mess around. She was sent to Spain, helped finger all manner of Nazi agents and is credited with having played a major role in fooling the Germans into believing the Allied invasion of the South of France was going to be at Marseille instead of Cannes.

What lunkheads, those Germans. Why would any Truly Tasteful invading army land at tacky Marseille when it could hit the sands of Cannes and stroll across the boulevard into the bar of the posh, luxurious Hotel Majestic?

The countess still travels to fun places like exciting Central America and keeps up some of her old (and I think possibly new) spy contacts. But perhaps she could do with one of those quickie CIA refresher courses. Early in her book she relates cleaning her revolver in the dark and dropping the clip. I`ve always found it a trifle difficult fitting a clip into the cylinder of a revolver.

Held up by a pistol

Also, she got grabbed by security men at the San Diego airport a few days ago when the X-ray scanner detected a toy plastic pistol her grandson had slipped into her bag. That would never have happened to her in 1947, when she was an agent in Central Europe (though it probably would happen to Lt. Col. Oliver North).

But she remains my favorite spy, if only because of her extraordinary style. The blurbs on her book jacket read like the roster of the best table at Mortimer`s--Audrey Hepburn, Dominick Dunne, Oscar de la Renta, William F. Buckley, etc., etc. She knew Ernest Hemingway back in the 1950s, but said he drank so much all the time that no one could ever understand what he was saying.

She`s planning a new book about her further adventures (``The Spy Wore Black``?). She has no interest in writing fiction. Indeed, with her life, it would be tame stuff.

Consider this about her Spanish house, where they found a mummified, centuries-old corpse buried in one of the bedroom walls. After anthropologists examined the body for science, she had it put back in the wall.

``Whenever I have houseguests I`d like to have go home,`` she said, ``I simply tell them what`s in the wall next to their bed.``